What to Expect in Trauma Therapy: Common Fears & Honest Answers

Not knowing what to expect can make starting therapy feel intimidating. Especially when you’re coming to talk about difficult experiences like unhealthy relationships, separation or divorce, pregnancy loss, car accidents, losing a loved one to suicide. These FAQs are here to ease some of that uncertainty and help you feel more prepared before your first session and empowered.

What happens in a trauma therapy session?

Sessions often focus on safety, connection, and building awareness. Our first session will be getting to know each other, understanding more how the trauma is causing symptoms or problems for you, and your goals for treatment. I will assess for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during this session. Regardless of if you meet criteria for PTSD or not, I can help support you in recovering after the trauma.

You will explore present-day triggers for symptoms, learn grounding tools, and gain confidence in using your tools. I’ll provide education and help you understand more how trauma symptoms are showing up for you, and how our treatment will focus on alleviating these experiences. We can slowly approach past experiences—with lots of space to pause, or move with more intention towards EMDR- whichever is what you need.

As you move through the phases of EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) therapy, your therapist will ask a series of questions to activate the memory network of the trauma we planned to address with EMDR. You will either use eye movements, tapping, or sounds as you think of the past experience, emotions, thoughts, and body sensations. We will pause with your therapist asking what you notice, checking on you, and then continuing with the eye movements, tapping, or sounds until distress is alleviated. EMDR Therapy is thorough because we want to provide the most relief to you. We will also work towards alleviating present triggers, and concerns in the future related to this trauma.

If the trauma is recent, we will work on providing coping skills, and often can move into EMDR Therapy to alleviate your trauma symptoms sooner. If we work with your trauma within 90 days of it happening, we can sometimes meet for for less sessions to treat intrusive images, body sensations, fear, or acute stress symptoms you’re experiencing. Your therapist will assess your readiness and pace of EMDR treatment with you.

After the initial therapy session, some clients may choose to work with EMDR Therapy Intensives. This provides the same focus on gaining tools to cope with PTSD symptoms, and to use EMDR to alleviate the distress from the trauma. EMDR Therapy Intensives allow clients to have focused, non-interrupted time to go deeper in their work, and often find relief faster.

How is EMDR therapy different than other therapies?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing Therapy) is designed to help integrate unresolved trauma memories in the brain. Traditional talk therapy often will not resolve symptoms and PTSD from trauma. EMDR taps into our brain and body’s natural way of healing and recovering from traumatic experiences. It helps us resolve the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses when the traumatic experience is triggered. You do not have to tell the story, or share details with your therapist in order to heal with EMDR therapy. We focus on past memories, present distress, and future impacts to address the full impacts of the traumatic event(s) on you.

Clients have described EMDR as gentler, more effective, and more thorough than other therapies they experienced for their trauma. It is different than having awareness about the impact of trauma, it moves towards integrating the traumatic memory, and treating the impacts of trauma. We focus on supporting you through the work, and moving at a pace that is helpful to you. Treatment course varies based on client experiences, resources, and needs.

EMDR can be used as the only therapy, in addition to your regular therapy, or as part of an overall treatment plan. Your therapist will discuss what supports may work best for you, and can coordinate with other therapists that refer you or will continue to see you during therapy.

How will I feel after a trauma therapy session?

Sometimes clients are more connected to the difficult experiences and emotions after EMDR sessions, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes processing trauma stirs things up temporarily where clients experience more vivid dreams, feeling emotions from what they processed, feel fatigue, or notice more activation in their nervous system. They may want to have more rest, less demands, and be gentler with themself after sessions. Other clients feel energized, relief, or lighter after their work in EMDR sessions. Both responses are ok.

As a Certified EMDR Therapist, I will help you stay grounded, within your window of tolerance during sessions, and regulate as you go. We explore what internal and external resources you have to support you in this difficult and rewarding work. We will spend time at the end of “processing” sessions containing the difficult material, and soothing you before you leave the session. We will also work on ways to care for yourself in between EMDR sessions so you feel comfortable with the process.

Part of the motivation and benefit for some clients in booking 90-minute sessions or EMDR Therapy Intensives, is the move through processing phase of EMDR quicker, and to have less time in between difficult sessions.

How long does trauma therapy take?

It varies. Some people feel better in a few sessions, months, and others take years. I understand this can be frustrating to not know more about how long the journey will take, but we move at a pace that is helpful to your healing. Healing unfolds at the pace that your system can handle.

If you experienced a single trauma from adulthood, this often will take less sessions. If your trauma was repeated in context of a close relationship, sexual violence, or trauma from childhood, you often need more sessions to resolve these experiences. Each person’s treatment is individualized to support you feeling steady again.

What if I only want to work on a recent experience and not delve into my childhood?

You are not alone in wondering this! Are there some connections from the recent experience to experiences in childhood? Maybe and maybe not. Are people able to work on recent experiences without going to the past? Yes. You do not have to work on all the traumatic experiences in your life in EMDR therapy.

We will work together to explore your focus for EMDR therapy, and build a treatment plan that works towards your goals. I will be honest if I think it may benefit you to process earlier life experiences, and you have a choice where we go during our assessment phases. If you are not ready yet, or don’t want to work on earlier experiences, we can talk about how to approach your EMDR journey if these experiences come up during processing. I have supported clients in focusing on certain themes, or recent experiences, and not processing experiences they didn’t feel ready to work on yet.

Do I have to talk about my trauma in detail?

Not unless you want to. EMDR therapy works without re-telling the trauma story. The focus is on how it lives in your body and affects you now—not just what happened then. The more important part is that you are connected to the traumatic memories and its impacts, not that you speak this aloud to your therapist. I have worked with clients that I never knew specific details about their traumas, and they were still able to complete EMDR therapy successfully.

What if I’m not ready to talk about it?

That’s completely okay. Building safety and trust comes first. You’re allowed to take your time. A trauma-informed therapist will never pressure you to go faster than feels safe. That wouldn’t be helpful to you.

You can also stop, or take a pause from EMDR therapy, as you need in the process. Therapy moves at your pace. You don’t have to rush or share anything before you’re ready. Safety and trust are built over time.

Still have questions?

When you’re considering trauma therapy, its important to feel comfortable with the therapist you’ll meet with, that they are qualified and experienced to help, and to ask questions to know if its a solid fit for you. I offer free consultations for clients to do just this. Schedule a free consultation to explore more!